Relay for Life: Time to reflect

This past weekend, Relay For Life held one of its annual fund raisers in support of cancer research kicking off Cancer Survivors Week. But all it made me think of are those we have lost.

It is coming up on nine years to the day that I lost my father. Some of you who remember Lou Burden have told me of your fond memories of him.

He has been described as kind, and I have been told about his sense of humor and how much he loved to dance. You told me how you remember his deep voice during his time on the local radio station.

Whether he was calling games with the late Alvin Powers in the early days or acting as the announcer at Camp Wilson, he is well remembered.

After all these years, he is still remembered as the gentle soul that he was, but he should also he remembered as a fighter.

For a year prior to his death at the age of 67, he fought a fast-moving cancer that started as a simple skin cancer. Like other stories I have heard, not all the cancer was caught when that spot was removed.

The remaining cancer went undetected for quite some time as it quietly made its way into his blood, bones, organs and brain. By the time the monster made itself known, he was in the late stages of the disease.

Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy were unable to stop its advancement. It just delayed the inevitable, racked up enormous medical bills and caused my father both physical and emotional pain.

It was just like my father to "not want to bother anyone" with what was happening and keep the fight from his children. I had to get a tip from a person in town who found out something was wrong before he admitted he was sick. At this point, he had been hiding it from me during months of phone conversations.

I rushed back here to find my once-lively father rail thin and exhausted. The disease had taken from him not only his health but the quiet retirement he wanted with his garden, Sandy and the dog.

The man who used to take me hiking in the mountains around Fall Creek now needed a cane. The radio voice was roughened by the radiation and poison in his body, and he was a pale yellow.

His days and nights were now filled with the constant thought of fighting a disease that creeped up on him while he was living his life. As the saying goes "we make plans and God laughs."

I am told my grandfather, his father, died in a similar way so I watch my fair Irish skin as if every skin cell were an enemy waiting to attack.

Even after all these years I still cry for the loss of him. The selfish side of me says I would rather have him still here with me. One part wishes he had not put himself through that pain to stay longer. The bubbling anger and rage in me wants to scream at God and call him the worst names I can think of.

If I am terrifying you, good. No one escapes this bully that waits for you when you least expect it, and everyone will get socked in the stomach by it at some point.

What can you do? Get yourself educated.

Know your family history and be proactive, know how to check yourself and know what skin cancer looks like and check for it frequently. If cancer runs in your family, start your tests early.

Early detection plus action equals survival. If survival means having a scar where the cancer used to be, take the scar over the cancer. You could always lie and say you got it in a knife fight.